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Smashing Silly Stereotypes moves forward
12/04/2017

Jenny Hill, chair of ARCH Tenants' Group, and
Carole Halfacre, the ARCH group facilitator, represent ARCH on the
campaign steering group. Although it's still early days,
there has been a lot of progress in putting the campaign
together. Catch up below.

Research

The campaign received very positive
talks with the London School of Economics (Anne Power) and with a
community based organisation. They are in the process of getting
two alternative approaches which the steering group will look at.
This will involve participatory research with tenants to look at
the source and the impact of the stigma of living in social
housing. The campaign expects to have this by theend of
April.The idea would be to have something in time for the CIH
conference in June, where the campaign will have a slot on the main
fringe stage.

Media

Work in developing a media campaign
took an unexpected turn as TPAS identified an opportunity through a
competition run by the Media Trust. Representatives from the
steering group took part in events at Ad Week Europe and gave a
brief to a group of creatives from ad agencies and from Facebook
who in turn pitched to a panel later in the week. Watch the presentation. (NB Forward video to
12 minutes to gain a quick overview of the campaign).

The media campaign will focus on the
theme of Benefit to Society and would be aimed at the current
negative stereotyping of social housing tenants, without repeating
it. The idea is to 'hijack' the narrative and turn it into
something positive. The campaign would build on the research
findings and aim to show the benefits that tenants bring through
their work, their caring role, their volunteering etc.

A piece of rather exciting news
is that the creatives will continue to support the steering group
in developing this campaign. Facebook has gone further and will
provide some funding towards extending its reach with £5,000 of
advertising credits.

The idea is that the media campaign
will be prepared to launch in September, around Housing Day.

Work with the
media

The campaign co-ordinator is working
on an initiative to provide journalists with easy access to good
images and interviews around social housing and is meeting with a
NUJ rep in April to see if there is mileage in developing a guide
for journalists (along the lines of the Church Action on Poverty
guidance) about writing stories on social housing and tenants and
setting up a joint asset bank where journalists could easily access
great images of homes and people as well as access to tenants who
have agreed to be interviewed.

Tenant
involvement

Tenants are actively involved in the
steering group and it is proposed to involve particular people in
leading the different strands of the campaign and to provide
training and support to give tenants the skills and confidence to
speak in public and to speak with the media so that the Campaign
has a good range of people who can be the public face of the
work.

If your council would like to support the
campaign directly then do get in touch with Catherine Little,
campaign co-ordinator at South Oxfordshire Housing Association via
email at CLittle@soha.co.uk or
call 0123 5515 900.